Who or what inspired you to play the saxophone?

My father had been a professional musician in Europe, playing mainly tenor sax. After he came to America, he stopped playing professionally and did other work so he could take care of our family. When I was a small kid, I remembered my father coming home from work, pulling out his Conn 6M(he sold his tenor, a 10M, in Germany)and practicing for a couple of hours. I remembered the big bundles of music and exercise books he had. I knew about Charlie Parker when I was 5 years old because my father had some Parker transcriptions with Bird's picture on the cover. By the time I turned 7, my father had stopped playing altogether. I didn't know what happened to the sax. Fast forward to the late 60's. I had been listening to a lot of Rock'n'Roll, played the guitar in a half-assed teenage way just to impress the girls in school. However, I still would listen to jazz every now and then. One day, one of my classmates had the Brubeck album Time Out, and he played me Take Five. As a 16 year old who thought that the ultimate music was Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa(I do still like them), this impressed me. However, when I got home, my father had just come from the record store and had bought a new album. That album was Benny Carter's greatest, Further Definitions. He played it and I was floored. At that moment, I told my father that I wanted to play the sax like that. My father smiled, and went into his junk closet. He pulled out a lot of junk, like tool boxes, electronic parts, tubes, wires, books and magazines, and other things. Then he pulled out a case wrapped in heavy canvas. In it was the Conn 6M. I opened the case and looked at it and I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw. He gave me the sax and my first lesson on the horn that night. A few years later, I'm walking down W. 50th street in New York with my sax slung on my shoulder. As I am walking, I notice a man walking slightly ahead of me also carrying an alto on his shoulder. As I pass him, I look at him and he looks at me. He looks familiar but I couldn't place him yet. He smiles and asks, which horn do you have? I told him a Conn 6M. He says, that's a great horn. Then he introduces himself. It's Lee Konitz. We talk a while, and he invites me up to his apartment on the Upper West Side. We spoke for over 2 hours in his beautiful apartment(it was the size of a house), and he gave me tips, and then asked me to play something. I was nervous, because up to that point, I was still not practicing a great deal, and I didn't think I was too good. I played Benny's solo part from Blue Star on Further Definitions, and Lee nodded and said, well, you got a sound of your own, how would you like to really learn how to play. Little did I know then that it was my first lesson with him. He encouraged and inspired me. Later I had the privilege of also meeting my idol Benny Carter many times when he was in NYC and in Boston, and it is because of these men that I continue to play today.

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